When it comes to climate change, everything is trending in the wrong direction. Summer 2023 was the hottest ever recorded in human history. Study after study shows that climate change is warming the planet to unsustainable levels. It has already baked intense storms, extreme heat and desperate droughts into humanity's future. Columbia University climatologist Dr. James Hansen, one of the earliest scientists to sound the alarm about climate change, has published a study noting that the "early phase of a climate emergency" is "already in the pipeline." Scientists recently calculated that even if we meet some of our more ambitious climate goals, we cannot stop the West Antarctic Ice Shelf from melting. And when it does finally liquefy, the resulting sea level rise will cause apocalyptic floods that displace almost a billion people.
In the midst of such a dire existential threat to the planet, some have urged President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency, if for no other reason than the potent symbolic significance of such a statement. Yet while Biden has arguably been one of the most pro-environmental presidents in American history, he has stopped short of officially declaring such, though CNN noted the president (incorrectly) claimed he had. "I've already done that," Biden said in an interview with The Weather Channel, adding "it is the existential threat to humanity.”
